Cyberpunk 2077 - NPCs Talk in Their Own Language

March 2nd, 2013, 02:30

In a Cyberpunk 2077 interview with one of the devs in Polish here it was said that they are thinking of adding a translator implant in the game, which translates what they NPCs say, which are obviously talking in different languages.

As of yet no decisions have been made, but we're thinking about a system that could tell the world's story. The idea is to record everything in original languages, i.e. if we'll meet Mexicans in the game, they'll be taking -- Mexican slang even, portrayed by Mexican actors. The player would be able to buy a translator implant, and depending on how advanced it is, he'll get better or worse translation.
You can't reliably recreate street slang of Los Angeles or some other American city, you can't simply dub it and reproduce those emotions, rhythm of speech, mannerisms. Everything has to be cohesive. Otherwise we'd simply hear that Polish actors are trying to imitate Americans. That won't work.

Sounds great, would be awesome and won't make it in the game at the very least not like it's described here. I can hardly remember a game where there are accents well done, let alone multiple full blown language supports (even in games with probably much higher budgets) - and when there are these implants that affect the translation… just no.

It would be cheapest to not do any VO but this sounds better than most other options. They dont necessarily have to pay for quality translations for all text in all languages and also capture the slang like they want so they can focus on quality for what they do have. I would be very happy with this approach.

For the translator, text is good with me but they could run it through Windows text-to-speech for the rest though that could be a bit much for most people.

Been a while that developpers told they would go away from that type of content. Type of content that extends artificially the lifespan of a game.
Back to the days when developpers pushed a player to go from A in the South to be B in the north, to move back to C in the South and to return to D in the north, just in order to add the travel time to the time of completion of the game.

Here, the player will be invited to go through multiple walkthroughs just to get that content.

I don't get that at all, ChienAboyeur?? If I decide to replay the game just to see funny translations, that's the equivalent of re-watching a movie only with your speakers stuck inside big helium balloons. It's just some silly thing to do for cheap laughs.

I wonder if anyone will know enough languages to be able to play the game with no translator at all?

Why yes I have. My uncle is partially-blind and uses it to read books. I will not claim that its perfect my any means and the default voices in Windows suck worse than any other ones I've heard. Those are very robotic. There are thirdparty versions that are much more pallet-able but they always have difficulty with inflection.

Personally I found that some of the British accented one to be much better quality to my american ear. Its been about 4 years since I've done anything serious with this stuff so I assume its gotten better. If you want in game immersion to highlight that translators are used then no better way than to do it.

I would also very much not force it down the throats of the users but for that poor translator version it would work. I'd rather they just use text if its an issue. Its not like they have a $30MM budget and can hire full voice acting in every language they support.

If it was used like the Infinity Engine games where they read the first sentence of a paragraph that would work for me. I also know I'm in the minority on this but thats fine.

Originally Posted by Zloth
I don't get that at all, ChienAboyeur?? If I decide to replay the game just to see funny translations, that's the equivalent of re-watching a movie only with your speakers stuck inside big helium balloons. It's just some silly thing to do for cheap laughs.

I wonder if anyone will know enough languages to be able to play the game with no translator at all?

Yipes, that is what I wrote. The same could have come with subtitles (ticked, unticked) without binding it to a piece of gear.

Makes me think of the Comic adaptations of the Dragonlance novels. You might be looking at a dialog with some characters in one frame, but the next frame would be from the POV of another character who didn't know the language that was being spoken. Their dialog bubbles were still there, but apparently in gibberish. I thought it was pretty cool. Of course I was 10, so I was easily impressed.